


Garden Green

by periferal



Category: DCU (Comics), Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe, The Black Garden
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-22 21:47:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21083588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/periferal/pseuds/periferal
Summary: [static] away h-human childthere the waters there the [static]with a faery [static]the world [ ]full of weeping you [static] understand-Golden Age recording, corrupted





	1. <vert>

**Author's Note:**

> The summary is a highly bastardized version of the refrain of "The Stolen Child" by W.B. Yeats.

“και!” the hunter calls. “και, και, I know you!”  
<>  
“No,” she told IT. “No!”  
~you deserve so much better~  
[IT bellows]  
“I will not Die in the Garden, only to return. I will not Die in the world, only to leave. I will Stay. I will Stay.”  
[IT bellows]  
~C h I L D!~  
“You may overrun the stones and bind Minds, but we are the Green, and we grow in the Dark.”  
~you cannot drink nothing. you must grow towards the Light~  
<>  
~come away, come away, come away~  
“και, these Vex are all wrong. They look like Hive.”


	2. <arbor>

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where did Kal-El go when the cities fell?

“Our offer is not one easily rejected,” the Emissary says. Her lips do not move. 

The gardener looks up, letting imagined dirt fall from her fingers. She has been allowed to create this space for herself, and sometimes she wonders how her past self would see her.

“I have rejected it,” the gardener says simply. Her green skin pulses with different light than most.

The Emissary disappears. The gardener sags to the ground.

“Friend,” she calls. “I need your help.”

-You know there is nothing I can do-

A vine pulls tentatively at her arm.

She loves wild things, but this garden must be cultivated. She loved weeds more than she loved the pretty-cut flowers, but the weeds here have lasers in their eyes. 

“What do they talk about today?” she asks. The Garden has drowned out other voices more than she knew they would. 

-What is today?-

The gardener presses her forehead against bare earth. She experiences time almost always in a line, but the garden knows the branching lines of the future.

“They are returning for the darkness,” she whispers. She hates the Vex more than she hated humanity, a long time ago. They would make her garden into themselves--all cool metal and sharp lines, half-wild green discarded as red-lighted eyes awaken. 

-The trees will do what they must-

The vine wraps tighter around her arm. 

-The corruption at our heart is growing, but even if the core rots, the roots stay, and the small greens grow in the rot-

“Alec...” she says, using the name he never had to ground herself. 

Water drips onto her hands. 

-We have found a friend to the Green-

The vine lets go of her hand. The grasses ahead of her parts, and she blinks, standing up again. “What should we do?” she asks.

-Guide them here-

She stares out over her garden. Each step takes her further from the heart of the Green, the plants brushing against her legs turning into cold static. 

“Kai, we need to follow these Vex.”

The Infinite Forest is a powerful sort of hypercausal metaphor. There are trees, but they are memories of trees, simulations of a past the Vex tore to pieces when they hollowed Mercury and remade it in their image. 

The Green ought not stretch here; its heart is the heart of the Vex, the Garden overrun by Minds. The reality engine IS the heart of the planet, and IT is the heart of the Garden, lurking dark and half-remembered. 

The Vex did not cut every tendril, sure that surely they would bring the Green into themselves, every last slice of biological matter consumed into the ever-churning mass of milk and metal. 

In the heart of the Infinite Forest, three guardians link hands before the exo grips the vines and starts to climb, followed by first the human, and last the awoken. 

“Kai,” Aias-6 calls down. “Can you hear the buzzing?”


End file.
